Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu and Palestinian Authority Mahmoud Abbas shook hands for the first time in five years at the climate conference in Paris Sunday. The two leaders were shown on the left of a high photo-op “family picture” with 150 world leaders.

For some reason, Israeli media thought it was worth a screaming headline, but the fine print stated the obvious – it was a handshake and nothing more and nothing less.

The meeting was more like two ships passing in the night but brushing along each other’s sides by accident.

The London Jewish Chronicle reported the handshake in perspective, telling its readers that Abbas and Netanyahu “bumped into other.” If so, better to shake hands than to get into a fist fight.

Abbas and Netanyahu did not appear to talk with each other. They really did not have much to say, except , “Excuse me.”

French leaders still are going through the motions of trying to arrange an official meeting between Abbas and Netanyahu so they can talk about peace.

People sniff their hands twice as much after a handshake, according to a Weizmann Institute study Why do people shake hands? A new Weizmann Institute study suggests one of the reasons for this ancient custom may be to check out each other’s odors.

Even if we are not consciously aware of this, handshaking may provide people with a socially acceptable way of communicating via the sense of smell. Not only do people often sniff their own hands, but they do so for a much longer time after shaking someone else’s hand, the study has found.

As reported today in the journal eLife, the number of seconds the subjects spent sniffing their own right hand more than doubled after an experimenter greeted them with a handshake. “Our findings suggest that people are not just passively exposed to socially-significant chemical signals, but actively seek them out,” said Idan Frumin, the research student who conducted the study under the guidance of Prof. Noam Sobel of Weizmann’s Neurobiology Department.

“Rodents, dogs and other mammals commonly sniff themselves, and they sniff one another in social interactions, and it seems that in the course of evolution, humans have retained this practice – only on a subliminal level.” To examine whether handshakes indeed transfer body odors, the researchers first had experimenters wearing gloves shake the subjects’ bare hands, then tested the glove for smell residues.

They found that a handshake alone was sufficient for the transfer of several odors known to serve as meaningful chemical signals in mammals. “It’s well known that germs can be passed on through skin contact in handshakes, but we’ve shown that potential chemical messages, known as chemosignals, can be passed on in the same manner,” Frumin says.

Next, to explore the potential role of handshakes in communicating odors, the scientists used covert cameras to film some 280 volunteers before and after they were greeted by an experimenter, who either shook their hand or didn’t. The researchers found that after shaking hands with an experimenter of the same gender, subjects more than doubled the time they later spent sniffing their own right hand (the shaking one). In contrast, after shaking hands with an experimenter of the opposite gender, subjects increased the sniffing of their own left hand (the non-shaking one).

“The sense of smell plays a particularly important role in interactions within gender, not only across gender as commonly assumed,” Frumin says. The scientists then performed a series of tests to make sure the hand-sniffing indeed served the purpose of checking out odors and was not merely a stress-related response to a strange situation. First, 2 they measured nasal airflow during the task and found that subjects were truly sniffing their hands and not just lifting them to their nose.

It turned out that the amount of air inhaled by the volunteers through the nose doubled when they brought their hands to their face. Next, the scientists found they could manipulate the hand-sniffing by artificially introducing different smells into the experimental setting. For example, when experimenters were tainted with a commercial unisex perfume, the hand-sniffing increased. In contrast, when the experimenters were tainted with odors derived from sex hormones, the sniffing decreased.

These final tests confirmed the olfactory nature of the hand-sniffing behavior. Taking part in the study were Ofer Perl, Yaara Endevelt-Shapira, Ami Eisen, Neetai Eshel, Iris Heller, Maya Shemesh, Aharon Ravia, Dr. Lee Sela and Dr. Anat Arzi, all of Prof. Sobel’s lab “Handshakes vary in strength, duration and posture, so they convey social information of various sorts,” says Prof. Sobel. “But our findings suggest that at its evolutionary origins, handshaking might have also served to convey odor signals, and such signaling may still be a meaningful, albeit subliminal, component of this custom.”

This report is a gift from God. While our dubious representatives at the negotiations with the PLO are running around like chickens sand the heads warning about the terrible things that would happen to us if we’re dropped from the EU list of good Jews you can trade with – it’s looking like the entire EU itself is up for a major reupholstering, and maybe, just maybe, some of the folks making the loudest threats will see the inside of a barred cell.

Ladies and Gentlemen, it appears the European Union, the one with the charter on what’s legal and decent, is one of the most corrupt organizations on the planet.

There, I said it.

How corrupt id the European Union? Cecilia Malmstrom, the European commissioner for home affairs, says it’s losing at least 120 billion euros a year to corruption.

The EU Anti-Corruption Report warns that “Corruption seriously harms the economy and society as a whole. Many countries around the world suffer from deep-rooted corruption that hampers economic development, undermines democracy, and damages social justice and the rule of law. The Member States of the EU are not immune to this reality.”

Malmstrom said the commission’s estimate that corruption costs Europe €120 billion, or roughly $162 billion, annually was almost certainly too conservative. The figure is equivalent to about 1 percent of the €11.7 trillion gross domestic product of the 28-nation European Union.

Are you not surprised? Me neither. The intro to the report continues: “Corruption varies in nature and extent from one country to another, but it affects all Member States. It impinges on good governance, sound management of public money, and competitive markets. In extreme cases, it undermines the trust of citizens in democratic institutions and processes.”

You know what this means, right? It means that every decision, every effort, every suggestion coming out of the EU is suspected of having a hidden agenda, and a nefarious one at that.

Do you want these people helping us strike a peace deal with our neighbors?

Most Businesses believe EU corruption is widespread and that the only way to succeed in business is through political connections and almost half of the companies doing business in Europe say corruption is a problem for them.

“In a time of appalling economic and financial crisis, recovering for the legal economy the money deviated by defrauders is of utmost importance; those funds are very much needed to foster growth and jobs,” said Spain’s Juan Fernando López Aguilar, who chairs the European Parliament’s Civil Liberties, Justice and Home Affairs Committee.

Someone should tell Aguilar that almost all firms in Greece, Spain and Italy believe corruption is widespread.

Construction companies, which often tender for government contracts, are the most affected. Almost eight in ten of those questioned had complaints about corruption. The NY Times reported that a 2013 study for European Union anti-fraud authorities described a case in which an unnamed government entity invited companies to bid on a contract to build two buildings. The winning bid was €600,000, even though other companies had offered to do the work for €400,000.

Somebody pocketed that €200,000.

So, I say, don’t buy stuff from these people, you just don’t know where it’s been. Boycott the European Union because they’re gonnifs.

The key findings at European level are:

The majority (76%) of Europeans think that corruption is widespread in their own country.

Countries where respondents are most likely to think so are: Greece (99%), Italy (97%), Lithuania, Spain and the Czech Republic (all 95%), Croatia (94%), Romania (93%), Slovenia (91%), Portugal and Slovakia (both 90%). The Nordic countries are the only Member States where the majority think corruption is rare – Denmark (75%), Finland (64%) and Sweden (54%).

More than half of Europeans (56%) think the level of corruption in their country has increased over the past three years (a surge compared to a previous study in 2011, when 47% perceived corruption to have risen over the same period of time).

Spain (77%), Slovenia, the Czech Republic (both 76%), Italy (74%) and Portugal (72%) are amongst countries where respondents are most likely to think corruption has increased.

23% of Europeans think that their government’s efforts are effective in tackling corruption; 26% that there are enough successful prosecutions in their country to deter people from corrupt practices.

81% of Europeans think that too-close links between business and politics in their country lead to corruption; 69% that favouritism and corruption hinder business competition; 67% that corruption is part of the business culture in their country; and more than half (56%) that the only way to succeed in business in their country is through political connections.

Around one in twelve Europeans (8%) say they have experienced or witnessed a case of corruption in the past 12 months. Yet only 12% of those who have encountered corruption say that they reported it.

Respondents are most likely to say they have experienced or witnessed corruption in Lithuania (25 %), Slovakia (21 %) and Poland (16 %) and least likely to do so in Finland and Denmark (3 % in each), Malta and the UK (4 % in each).